Family secret shared at Lunar New Year over cake with my Extraordinary Aunts

Kung Hei Fat Choi! May peace and prosperity be yours, for you and your family, in the Year of the Rat. I’m so unprepared for it that we must forego my usual foray into the world of Chinese astrology. But I bring cake.

Your Girl Reporter has returned from a flying visit to Australia, just in time to welcome the Lunar New Year – feeling neither rested nor ready for whatever it may bring.

I’m not alone in feeling overwhelmed. There are so many challenges, coming at us so fast and from all directions. Even the traditional Lunar New Year gatherings have been disrupted for many families as we face yet another threat in the shape of the SARS-like virus in Wuhan.

The Rat is the first of the 12 animals which make up the Chinese zodiac. He is quick-witted, optimistic and enterprising. All traits we could do with as we face the challenges of the year ahead. Picture by Severine Faustus

Sharing special foods with family is an integral part of high days and holidays. Here in Hong Kong, I’m expecting a visit from my honorary Chinese Aunty Dana, bearing homemade turnip cake and something sweet.

“It isn’t really New Year until I’ve eaten turnip cake, but we must also have something sweet,” she said when we began this tradition on my return to Hong Kong. “Dana! I know!” I told her, and proudly raised the lid of my prosperity tray, crammed with melon seeds, White Rabbit candy and other goodies.

For Your Spoiled Girl Reporter, it will be the second time in as many weeks that I share special food with family. The other occasion was the 80th birthday of another honorary aunty – Joan “The Bone” Byrne.

Regular viewers know her as My Extraordinary Aunt and, if I have a resolution for the Year of the Rat, it is to finally get back to her story and fill you in on What Joan Did Next. Trust me, it’s extraordinary.

Growing up in Hong Kong, and then following my own wandering star, has left me with a deep appreciation for time spent with family, and a hunger for any scraps of knowledge about our history.

So, it was quite something to sit around a table with Joan and her sisters ­– each one of them extraordinary – and enjoy a slice of birthday cake, made to my great-grandmother’s recipe, by Aunty Carmel.

Extraordinary aunts and one darling uncle at Joan’s birthday party. Vince Byrne (centre) with his sisters, from left: Carmel, Rita, Marie, Barbara and Joan. Picture by Brian Thew

As she handed round the plates, Aunty Rita gave a word of thanks to Bob, Carmel’s neighbour who had recently died. She had been tasked with clearing out his pantry and the fruit and rum she found there were his contribution to this special cake.

We raised our mugs to Bob and watched closely as Aunty Marie raised her fork, took the first taste, and said, “Yes. That’s right.” It was quite a moment for a wandering Girl Reporter, who was new to the family cake.

Obviously, the recipe is closely guarded, but Aunty Carmel shared a few of the traditions around the baking of it which I believe are safe to pass on.

I’ve written previously about my dad Jack Spackman’s summers with his cousins, the Byrne family, at Burrangong in New South Wales. Carmel’s description of baking the family cake brought her mother May’s kitchen to vivid life.

Joan does the honours… a tense moment as the gathering wonders how she got to 80 with knife skills like that. Picture by Brian Thew

The cake was baked, in an old wood stove, for four to five hours, Carmel said. “No doors could be banged, no voices heard – this was a huge challenge for the noisy Burrangong crew but one to which we dared not rise.”

Fresh from the oven, the cake was swaddled in towels for at least 24 hours, cooling it slowly to avoid cracking, then “fed” every week with spirits to keep it happy. The cake was then gently massaged with apricot jam and covered with almond paste and royal icing.

No matter the occasion, Carmel said, it must be wrapped in ribbon. “These ribbons were valued and often served multiple cakes. And yes, these cakes did take on personalities and legendary status. A shop-bought cake was never the same!”

There were also strict rules on the ingredients. Glacé cherries, both green and red, could only be used in Christmas cakes, while almonds were reserved for wedding cakes. “Any other nuts – especially those collected from roadside trees or (pilfered) from neighbours – were for other cakes.”

It’s women’s histories that are baked into family cakes

The family historians say our common ancestor was an Irish convict named Michael Fogarty who was transported for life in 1829 for the crime of “coining”.

But it’s women’s histories that are baked into family cakes and their rules about cherries and almonds speak to us about their hardships and resilience if we take the time to listen.

My great-grandmother, who is credited with the recipe, was born Martha Jane Flint, daughter of the first town clerk of Cowra. He was Frank Flint, an adventurous Englishman who fought on the Union side in the American civil war before trying his luck in Australia, presumably chasing gold.

Did Martha bring the cake recipe with her when she married Jack Fogarty, grandson of the convict? Did her mother Mary – first postmistress at Gooloogong – bake it, crammed with almonds and wrapped in bright ribbon, for her daughter’s wedding day?

The children of May and Bill Byrne, taken around 1955 and, I understand, the last time they were all together for a portrait. Front row, from left: Damian, Vincent, Gerard, Carmel, Rita. Back row, from left: Joan, Marie, Robert, Patricia, Barbara. Picture courtesy of Joan Byrne

Or did she learn it from her mother-in-law, Eliza Jane? There’s an army of family fact checkers out there, so the answer won’t be long in coming. If it is a Fogarty cake, I will hear about it quickly. Family history is a passion among us and yet until very recently it has held a secret far more important than the ingredients of a fruit cake.

I discovered more than the family cake that day.

I also learned that Eliza Jane Fogarty, great-grandmother to Joan and her sisters, as well as to my father Jack Spackman, was a Wiradjuri woman.

I only know her from my Uncle Fred Spackman’s research into the family tree, compiled in the 1990s and my handy guide to our many tangled branches. He recorded her name as Eliza Jane O’Leary – you can see why I assumed she was Irish – and that she was born in 1861 and adopted by a family called Sheehan.

If my dad was aware his grandfather was Indigenous, he never mentioned it

It appears that Eliza was a member of Australia’s Stolen Generations, and that her son – my father’s grandfather – was commonly known as “Black Jack” Fogarty and one of his brothers as “Black Paddy”.

Which all raises the rather obvious question of how such a secret could have remained hidden to us, raised by people who knew these men. My father told me several stories about his Pop, but if he was aware his grandfather was Indigenous, he never mentioned it.

And, asked directly once if we had any Indigenous ancestry, my grandma – “Black Jack’s” daughter – looked thoughtful, before replying, “I never heard that we did.” At the time, I was just relieved that Grandma wasn’t racist, but it now appears she was choosing her words with care.

She never heard that we did, because it was never spoken of. That was something the descendants of Eliza Jane, gathered around the table, agreed. And we were grateful things have changed, so that our biggest family secret these days (as far as I know…) is a recipe.

She never heard that we did, because it was never spoken of…

After generations of silence, there’s an eagerness in us to learn more about our Indigenous ancestor’s life, to bind her true history into the mix of our family story and wrap it in bright ribbon. And share it, over family fruit cake, with some cousins we have yet to meet.

The recipe is a secret I am happy to keep, just as I’m delighted that this other secret has finally come to light, through the diligent research of My Extraordinary Aunty Joan. I look forward to learning more in the Year of the Rat.

But first, I must put the kettle on. Aunty Dana will be here shortly with turnip cake, and something sweet, so the new year can really begin.

An update on my mother Margaret Spackman

The main purpose of my trip to Australia was to visit another extraordinary woman – my mother, Margaret Spackman. Shortly after she turned 80 in October, she moved into a nursing home on Australia’s northeast coast.

Her move went well, thanks to my sister Sophia and Mum’s good friends who were on hand to see her safely into her new home. Your Girl Reporter could only look on from far away Hong Kong and provide what little support I could.

Just a couple of Girl Reporters – my mum and me. January 2020. Picture by Ann-Maree Spackman

Trust me, my burden was light compared to theirs, and I will be forever grateful – to Sophia especially – for the magnificent effort, her difficulties compounded by the very real threat of surrounding bushfires.

Mum is frail but in good health and in excellent hands. The nursing home is everything I could wish for and Mum’s room has a large window where she can look out on a landscape she has worked so hard to preserve since her return to Australia.

Unfortunately, she has been diagnosed with early stage dementia and her short-term memory isn’t always great. But I was proud to tell her that her work as founding secretary of the Hong Kong Journalists Association made a difference which is still evident today in the professionalism and integrity of local reporters.

Mum was very moved. She is aware of the current challenges faced by journalists in Hong Kong and was keen to hear news from the city she called home for 20 years. She asked me to pass on her thoughts and prayers to you all.

© Maria Spackman 2021

You can read more about Mum’s contribution to Hong Kong journalism here:

And you can catch up on Aunty Joan’s adventures here:

You might also like: A little trip down Memory Lane to Burrangong

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